Since his arrival at the station on Dec. 21, Hadfield has posted more than 100 pictures to Twitter and Google+, most of them showing amazing views of Earth below. Between his official duties and his unofficial Earth-watching sessions, how does he find time to sleep?

"Yes, I should sleep more on station," he told one follower, "but the view from the window is like a perpetual magnet, too wondrous to ignore."

His favorite hangout is the seven-windowed Cupola observation deck, which provides an unparalleled view of Earth. His favorite camera? "We use primarily Nikon F2s and F3s, with a variety of lenses," he said on Twitter. "We even take them out on spacewalks, into the hard vacuum."

To get those awesome pictures of Earth landscapes, he brings out the Big Lens. "The big lens is Nikkor 600 mm, used with a 2-fold converter = 1200 mm," he tweeted. "Available for just US$10,300."

When you consider that the space station's crew is delivering pictures that no one on Earth can, that seems like a small price to pay. Check out a few of the recent masterpieces from outer space:

Correction for 8 p.m. ET Jan. 8: The original headline for this item called Hadfield the space station's skipper, but it's a little too early to call him that. NASA astronaut Kevin Ford is currently the station commander, and Hadfield is a flight engineer. Hadfield will take on the title of commander when Ford heads back down to Earth in March.

Update for 1 p.m. ET Jan. 9: I've added a link to Hadfield's Google+ page as well as a couple of fresh images, showing the Australian wildfires and a Central Asian landscape.